Innocence
by icor
Summary: Scientists and guns are an interesting mix, and Vincent Valentine is just too soft. [LucreciaVincent]


**Notes:** Because I wanted to write Lucrecia going mad in her own, subtle way. I haven't played DoC, so this may contradict anything other than original game canon.

----------------

The gun felt so much lighter as she pulled the bullets out one by one, rolling them in her right hand and dropping them to the stone floor of the lab with a slow, steady _thud thud thud._ Of course, without the bullets, the revolver was only an empty shell—a vessel waiting to be filled, so to speak—and the only threat it offered was pure fantasy.

Lucrecia began to wonder if she'd ever feel like that again; empty and _free_, without such an enormous weight on her shoulders, (or inside her, as the case was).

Still, she kept one bullet inside the gun, as she had resolved to nights before and frowned; her stomach was growing at an alarming rate.

Leaning on the sterile-white work surface, she quite casually examined the gun, turning it in her hands and glancing down the barrel (but not for long, just in case her fingers slipped) but being unnervingly gentle the whole time, as if it was a precious, breathing specimen. It was only natural though—Lucrecia Crescent had the hands of a scientist: steady, soft and ever-so careful with everything they made contact with, firm and commanding, and always, _always_ covered in blood.

The gun was most certainly a fitting means to an end for her, then. Wiping the gun powder off of her hand she smiled a little, and span the cylinder several times, listening to the sounds of the firing chambers lining up in her little game of roulette.

The scientist in her protested. The Six Shooter seemed to offer her fair odds: a five-in-six chance of living, and a one-in-six chance of dying, and these were odds she did not like at all. _(So why are you playing this game? You know the odds will only become more tempting tomorrow.)_ And so stubborn Lucrecia Crescent raised the gun to her jaw, cocked the hammer back with her thumb, and wrapped a finger around the trigger.

It was a test run, just a test run; she twisted her wrist so that length of the barrel rested against her jaw and aimed into the air, squeezed the trigger and her eyes shut at the same time. There was an empty _'clunk,'_ and she winced nonetheless, only finally opening her eyes to check for imaginary signs of broken glass or spilt blood.

No such luck. Pressing the tip of the barrel to her temple Lucrecia let out a sigh, pulling down the trigger over and over again, as the _clunk-clunk-clunk_ mocked her with a hollow firing chamber.

This faulty method of should-be suicide probably would have continued long through the night until morning finally forced her to quit, had it not been for the footsteps coming towards the lab door.

It was probably Gast, she though as she quickly placed the gun back down her lab coat and fumbled to kick the bullets under the table. He was always forgetting things, unlike Hojo who never returned to the lab for such petty things, and Lucrecia vaguely wondered how such a forgetful man turned out to be such a genius.

The door opened, but it wasn't another white-coat clad scientist who came in.

"Vincent?" she asked a little wearily, surprised just out of breath she sounded.

Vincent looked as stern and threatening as he always did, arms folded across a perfect blue suit that she just knew was hiding a ridiculous amount of weaponry, eyes cold, penetrative and unblinking. She cleared her throat a little, intent on not letting the Turk pick up on the wave of fear that always swept through her whenever he was there.

Oh, he was there to protect the scientists, her included, it was true, but there was something altogether unnerving about the man. Something about his eyes, she always thought, and the way they were always fixed on her, washed blood-red, so intense that he could probably see right _through_ her. Could probably read her mind—it was a childish thought, but it made her shudder none the less.

"I seem to have misplaced one of my guns," he explained calmly, shutting the door quietly behind him. "I was wondering if I left it in the lab earlier..."

He took a step forward and Lucrecia silently cursed herself. So, it was Vincent's gun she had adopted after all—she'd thought as much, but couldn't quite comprehend why she thought it a good idea to just take it at the time.

If she hadn't hidden it away, she could have returned it to its rightful owner and be done with it—simply cover it over with some feeble explaination of being interest into the mechanics of the device, and the discarded bullets could have been a primitive dissection—but of course, panic had got the best of her.

"Nothing was left here, Vincent. Sorry, perhaps you should go ask professor Hojo, he usually—" her plan to get the Turk out of the room was rather weak when she thought about it, and to no surprise he quickly cut her off.

Lucrecia protested as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him, and tried to push him off with the other hand; Vincent only coughed to clear his throat as he waited for her to calm down.

"It seems rather odd then, that there is gunpowder smeared across your lab coat. Unless it's the latest ingredient of your next experiment," he said matter-of-factly, an almost invisible trace of amusement lining his words.

Letting go of her wrist, he let her pull away. She let out a loud _tsk_, brushed her fingers over her wrist to ensure that it wasn't bruised, and quite swiftly pulled the gun out; the hammer already pushed down, and the revolver pointed directly at its owner.

Vincent was beginning to look less and less impressed—Lucrecia was a calm, collected individual, and she did not freak out as she seemed to be doing right now. It was irrational. She thrived on logic and understanding, not flat out violence and bluffs. He pondered between asking her what was wrong and putting his hands in the air for a while.

"You know I can see the bullets on the floor, Lucrecia," he said gently, moving a little closer.

"One-in-six Vince," she murmured as she tossed him the gun, and he didn't quite catch the meaning.

Turning around she looked right past the stack of paper work on her desk, and pretending to take interest she started sorting them into random piles. "You can leave now," she told him quite flatly.

She heard the now-familiar whirl of the chamber behind her, and a rustle of fabric as the gun disappeared into Vincent's jacket. There were a few footsteps, and then a pause.

"There's no need to always push me away," he whispered from across the room.

And in all honesty, she didn't want to—or rather, _hadn't _wanted to. At first things were fine: she knew Vincent by reputation alone _(and of course, his father who died for you, girl)_ and it was the same for him. She avoided him, it was true, and for his own good, but she had never expected such a strong, intimidating reaction from him.

Oh, she knew of his affections for her only too well, and it had gone from bad to worse. Constant bouts of sickly kisses from Lucrecia painted his lips in the darkest hours of the night, and left him with a horrible, dull, feeling of hope.

"There are only a few reasons I can think of for you to have a gun."

She waved him off. Vincent was soft. Too soft for a Turk; he'd spent too long protecting the self-proclaimed innocent and had forgotten what it was like to kill. An old fashioned, honest, hard working Turk would have held her down and kidnapped her by now. Stolen her away in the night, gun buried deep in her temple. But not Vincent; Vincent was _kind_, and she hated it more than anything else.

"Let me help you," he almost begged.

Lucrecia turned to him at this point, hating herself for her malignant weakness, for always giving in to the man. With a sigh she sat on the floor, knees hunched up and eyes low. This was enough of an invitation for Vincent who made his way across the room and sat besides her, legs crossed neatly as he lent against the leg of the desk. He cleared his throat awkwardly and adjusted his tie to fill the silence.

He scared her, that much was true, with his borderline-obsessive habits, his silent-yet-forceful personality and those all-too watchful eyes, but Lucrecia could think of no one better to discuss thoughts plagued by suicide and guilt with.

"This makes me a bad person, doesn't it?" Lucrecia asked.

Vincent watched as she ran her fingers over the bump of her stomach, and was quiet for a moment; he got the feeling that it was the first time she had ever done such an act, the first time she had considered it as a baby—_her_ baby—rather than some nameless specimen.

"Shinra only hire murderers," he reflected quite bluntly.

Something about the statement seemed to amuse Lucrecia, and she let out a bitter laugh. This time she grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand onto her stomach.

"You speak only the truth, Mr Valentine," she murmured as she put a cold hand over his and gently pressed it down. "Can you feel that?"

Vincent wasn't quite sure _what_ he was mean to feel, but there was definitely something there; something he couldn't express, almost as if he hadn't felt it _yet_. Whatever it was, he knew it wasn't good. He simply nodded.

She let her hand linger there for a moment, before unconsciously linking her fingers with Vincent's. The man stiffened a little, but shifted closer to her.

"This isn't going to end well."

"Then let me take you away, Lucrecia," Vincent offered. "You and your baby—we can get far away from here, and have our own lives."

She knew Vincent would keep his promise, if he could. In the end she only smiled, and quietly asked, "Why would you do such a thing for me?"

"You know that I love you, and I do not know how many times I will have to tell you." His words were poison. "We can have the future to ourselves."

This time Lucrecia could not bring herself to smile, but instead found herself turning to face Vincent, hands forcefully grabbing the neck of his suit and pressing him down to the cold floor. Something had changed inside of her, she realised that much as she stared down at the Turk laying before her.

Leaning over him she ran her fingertips through his black hair, nails digging into his skull _(and yet still, he doesn't flinch or complain) _as she pushed herself against his body, breathing heavily onto his neck. She could feel the revolver dig into her chest through his jacket, and Vincent thought it would be too bold to wrap an arm around her.

She had fallen in love with Hojo because people were scared of him, scared of the twisted smiles he gave and the workings of his mind. Lucrecia had felt no such fear, had laughed when he spoke and admired his genius, and yet when she was with Vincent, kind Vincent with desperate eyes, she began to feel it for the first time. It was the only true fear you could ever feel: the fear in your heart when someone offered you truth, what you _really_ wanted, and you were so trapped in your own reality that you denied it.

He scared her because he loved too much.

_I have seen our futures, _she though bitterly, _and they are not entwined. You're nothing more than a puppet for demons, and I don't even breathe. _

She could have said it all to him, and she wanted to; instead Lucrecia pulled her head back and through tears pressed her lips onto Vincent's, forcing all the hate she had for him, the hate she had for her unborn son, the hate she had for Shinra—the hate she had for _everyone—_to the surface.

The world was rotten. She understood that now, only now that the experiments had ended and her blood was stained, all because she had taken what Gast and Hojo had to offer. It had all seemed so noble then, forcing history to repeating itself. Poisoning her own unborn child in the name of science and about to bring the downfall. The world was rotten, and it was going to become worse; any love she had for Vincent Valentine would burn along with it.

Lucrecia lay there, waiting for Vincent's haunting embrace and praying for his gun.

Neither could come soon enough.


End file.
